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A new customisable electronic watch called the Pebble reached the developer’s $100,000 funding goal on Kickstarter within two hours of the project being published.
"We’re absolutely blown away by your support, Kickstarter! $100k in 2 hours must be a new record," wrote Pebble Technology on the Kickstarter page.
The firm had previously produced an electronic watch called the inPulse which coupled with the Blackberry smartphone. The new E-paper equipped Pebble is the first to be compatible with both iPhone and Android models.
Early bird Pebble watches for US$99 were quickly snapped up leaving pledges of $115 with $15 shipping as the price of entry for obtaining a Pebble watch when it’s delivered in September.
Connecting to smartphones via Bluetooth, the Pebble is customisable with uploadable apps as well as displaying alerts and messages from smartphone apps. Cycling, running and controlling music apps are a few of the suggested uses.
The watch faces can also be customised via a simple process of downloading new faces off a Pebble App store, or hackers can get their hands dirty by coding on smartphones or writing code for the watch directly.
One of the biggest surprises is that the e-paper display shown in the Kickstarter video updates so rapidly that simple animations are possible. The display technology no doubt also plays a role in the watch managing 7-days of use between charges.
The project has reached over $350,000 of a $100,000 funding goal with 37 days left to the 18th of May funding date.
